


It's a Bloodsport

by MidnightStorm6593



Category: The Vampire Diaries (TV)
Genre: F/M, Murder, Season 4 - AU, Violence
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2015-06-25
Updated: 2017-08-03
Packaged: 2018-04-06 01:35:27
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 7
Words: 18,137
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4202973
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/MidnightStorm6593/pseuds/MidnightStorm6593
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>“Haven’t you noticed it yet, darling?”</p><p>“Noticed what?”</p><p>“All these strange murders…the victims are all supernatural.”</p><p>And just like that, Bonnie Bennett finds herself plunged into her strangest, most disturbing ordeal yet.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

Apparently the world's coming to an end. Elena was now in transition, so of course the entire world must halt.

And Bonnie…Bonnie doesn't care.

She should. Elena's supposed to be her best friend. She should be there trying to help or trying to do the impossible and reverse it before the transition was completed.

She's not, though. Instead, she shuts off her incessantly ringing cell phone and decides to catch up on much needed sleep.

Just as she starts to doze off, someone's pounding on the front door. She groans and pulls the covers over her head, fully content to ignore it. Except, the pounding then started on her window.

Irritated, she gets up and shoves the window open, almost making the person on the other side take a nasty tumble.

Turns out that other person is none other than Damon Salvatore.

Because of course.

"What are you doing?" She asks.

"Me? What about you?" He responds with a frown. "Why did you suddenly go AWOL? Especially when you know what's happened?"

"Because I don't care." Strangely enough, she says the words before she actually thinks them.

"What?"

"I don't care," Bonnie repeates.

She thinks back through everything that's happened in the past year and a half. Vicki dying, losing Grams, Caroline becoming a vampire, Jenna dying finding her mother, finding out why her mother left, her mother getting turned into a vampire, her mother abandoning her yet again, Alaric dying, the number of times she's nearly died (sometimes willingly, sometimes not).

All of it connects back to Elena one way or another.

It's not Elena's fault. At least not entirely. It's not like she asks for these things to happen. And Bonnie knows that she feels guilty enough over it all.

And she does love Elena. She really does. Elena's her best friend, her sister. Loving Elena hurts, though. And there's only so much hurt any one person can take.

And it's not like she enjoys thinking this way, but she can't help if maybe this was meant to be Elena's fate. The number of times she's escaped certain death…Bonnie can't help but wonder if it's something fate keeps trying to see through, but everyone keeps interfering.

"This was always going to happen sooner or later," Bonnie says quietly. "Her life's always been in danger too much for it to not happen. Now maybe she can actually defend herself somewhat and Klaus won't be able to use her as a blood bag anymore."

"Klaus is dead," Damon replies. He has that look on his face, the one that he gets when he knows something sinister is about to go down.

"If he was, you and everyone else would be dead."

"What did you do? Bonnie, what—"

"Go home Damon." And with that, she snaps the window shut, ignoring and further protests.

To say that hadn't gone well would have probably been one of the biggest understatements ever.

* * *

Damon can't help but stare at the window that Bonnie had just snapped shut, the thoughts in his head swirling.

He supposes he knew there would come a day where Bonnie Bennett basically gave them all a big "Fuck you."

Well, actually, no he didn't. Despite everything that's happened to her (a fair share of it being him and Stefan's fault), she's always gone to extraordinary lengths to help them. So he had taken it for granted and took advantage for it.

"Where's Bonnie?" Stefan asks with a frown when Damon walks through the Gilbert's front door alone.

"Uh, yeah, about that…" Damon begins. "She doesn't want to help us and she did something to keep Klaus alive, but wouldn't say  _what."_

Stefan gapes at him.

"Okay," he says slowly. "Okay…we knew the possibility of Bonnie being able to reverse this somehow was a huge longshot, anyway. I'll…I'll go let Elena know she has a decision to make."

"Or we just shove some blood down her throat and be done with it already."

"Yeah, because you were so thrilled when I did that to you."

Damon doesn't say anything as Stefan ascends the stairs to Elena's bedroom. Instead, he turns around and exits the home. There was a nice, big bottle of bourbon calling his name somewhere.

* * *

Bonnie had been perfectly content to sleep, yet apparently it just wasn't meant to happen.

She receives a rude awakening in the form of a group of men pointing guns at her and roughly ordering her to get up. Some of them wore a deputy's uniform.

"What—"

"Get up and keep your hands where we can seem them,  _witch,"_ one of them snarls.

A chill goes through her body. She doesn't know exactly what's going or why, but she has a feeling she doesn't want to find out. But now she has a split second decision to make. Does she follow their demands or take action and hope that her magic works faster than their bullets.

She sends two of them flying into the wall across from her, not caring that the mirror on her vanity cracks or that the possessions on top of them come tumbling down. Then, a split second before the other two could squeeze their triggers, she breaks their hands, causing them to shout out and drop their guns. She sends them flying, too.

"Bonnie!" Matt yells, bursting into her bedroom. "Bonnie, are you okay?"

Shakily, Bonnie nods and looks at Matt wide-eyed. "Do you know what's going on?"

"Before he died, Ric ratted you all out to the Founders' Council. They know about you and everyone else. And they took Stefan and Elena."

Bonnie's mouth falls open a little. Those men had seemed to have no qualms about potentially killing her then and there, so Stefan and Elena could already be… Maybe she hadn't been willing to violate nature by trying to reverse Elena being in transition, but she certainly wasn't going to leave her to fend for herself against a some crazed, misguided authority.

"C'mon, Damon knows where they are," Matt says grabbing Bonnie by the arm and pulling her out of the room and towards the stairs.

"Damon?"

Since when did Matt and Damon team up for  _anything?_

"Long story, but let's go."

Thankfully, Damon keeps his mouth shut the entire way. Probably because he's too busy thinking about all the creative ways he's going to kill the Council, judging by his white-knuckled grip on the steering wheel and the thin line his lips were pressed into.

"Wait, Pastor Young's farm?" Bonnie asks with a frown when they pull up.

"He's the one calling the shots," Damon says tightly.

"What? No way. He wouldn't hurt Elena. She used to babysit his daughter. He's known us since we were really little."

"Elena wasn't a vampire then and you weren't a witch."

"So what now?" Matt interjects, gravel crunching under his feet.

"Now, we draw the good pastor out," Damon says, grabbing Matt by the back of the neck.

"What the hell are you doing?!" Bonnie shouts out.

"The boy is innocent, let him go," calls out a voice from the front porch.

"Come on out, then," Damon responds.

"I'm not coming out and you're not coming in."

"Pastor Young," Bonnie says, stepping a little closer and trying to reason with him. "You've known me and Elena since we were babies, let me come in and talk to you."

"Exodus twenty-two eighteen: Thou shalt not suffer a witch to live," Pastor Young replies, his tone calm but adamant as always.

And then they're surrounded by men wearing body armor and holding guns. She sees the veins below Damon's eyes become more prominent and sees his fangs descend and Bonnie knows it's going to be a bloodbath.

Matt is thrown to the ground and Damon rushes one of the man, easily pulling the gun away from him and snapping his neck. Bonnie uses her magic to throw two of them into trees, soundly knocking them out.

Matt reaches out and grabs her by the ankle, pulling her down on the ground to avoid a bullet.

By the time she gathers her bearings and pulls herself up, Damon had already disposed of the others. But, in the distance, they could all hear more coming.

 _What, do they have a whole army or something?_ Bonnie wonders.

"Find Stefan and Elena," Damon says. "I'll take care of the rest."

Bonnie nods and pulls Matt up and they both begin running to the barn together. She hears the crack of a gun firing and Matt is on the ground yelling in pain.

"Oh my God," Bonnie cries. "Matt!"

"For once I got lucky. It just grazed me," he groans, gritting his teeth and pulling himself back up. There was a nasty gash on his shoulder.

They rush into the barn to find only Stefan standing in there. She only briefly catches a glimpse of Rebekah before the blonde speeds off.

"Where's Elena?" Bonnie asks breathlessly.

"She ran out to go give you guys a hand."

Matt groans and slumps against the wall, sliding to the floor. Looking at him, Bonnie becomes alarmed by how much blood he's losing.

"We need to get you to a hospital," Bonnie says, trying to pull Matt up.

"I don't have to insurance for it. Besides, I told you, it just grazed me," Matt protests.

"Don't be stupid," she says incredulously. "You're losing a lot of blood."

Stefan crouches down, biting in his wrist with a sickening crunch and pressing it to Matt's mouth. Matt makes a sound of protests and pushes Stefan away, scrambling to get up. Some of the blood must have gone down, though, because Bonnie didn't see any more fresh blood sliding down his arm.

"What's your problem?" Stefan snaps.

"Stop saving me! Elena's a vampire because you saved me," Matt says. "I have to live with that."

"No, you  _get_ to live with it. She put your life before hers, so every morning you get out of bed, earn it," Stefan shoots back.

"Oh, shut up!" Bonnie snaps, much to Matt and Stefan's surprise. Her hands are clenched into tiny little fists, her eyes blaze with fire, and the overhead lights flicker warningly.

"You don't have to justify your existence to anyone," Bonnie tells Matt. "And you," she turns to Stefan, "Why do  _you_  get to decide who deserves to live and who dies? Elena's a vampire. It's not the end of the world. No, she didn't want it, but she'll learn to deal. Caroline did and so did my mother and they didn't exactly get a choice either, if you recall.  _Get over yourself._ "

She takes Matt by the arm and pulls him out of the barn with her, finding that Damon and Elena had taken care of any others that were coming after them for the time being. Except, Bonnie had a feeling that there was much more to come.

_Right when I thought that maybe, just maybe I could stop looking over my shoulder…_

* * *

All was dark and quiet in the house. A little  _too_ quiet for Ashley's taste.

A thump on the other side of the wall that she shared with her sister's room makes her sit up. She hears her sister's door creek open.

"Hannah?"

No response.

_And this is why you shouldn't watch horror movies on your own at night before you go to bed._

When she peeks her head outside her room, she sees that Hannah's door was wide open.

"Hannah?" Ashley hisses, tiptoeing into her sister's room. "Did you fall out of bed or something?"

Her sister lies perfectly still in bed, not responding to her.

"Hannah, I know you're a light sleeper and can hear me, so you can cut it out and stop trying to scare me." She rips the covers off Hannah and a scream leaves her mouth.

Hannah lies in bed, eyes wide open and glassy. A gaping hole in her chest soaks the bed sheets in blood.

"Mom! Dad!" Ashley shrieks, tripping over her feet to get to her parents' bedroom. "Mom, Dad, Hannah's—" Her foot hits something wet and she falls forward onto her face.

The moon gives off just enough light that she can discern that she's fallen into a pool of blood. The sound that comes out of her mouth is indescribable.

She doesn't notice the dark figure the looms up behind her.


	2. Chapter 2

She gets a call from Matt the next morning. He informs her that he had called Sherriff Forbes to ask about the Founders Council, but it turns out that Pastor Young and the Council had all died in an explosion earlier that morning.

"What?" Bonnie asks, more than a little dumbfounded.

"Obviously there's not a whole lot of details since it just happened hours ago, but Sherriff Forbes thinks that Pastor Young did it."

"That literally makes no sense, though…"

Last night, Pastor Young had been perfectly happy leading the Council and some insane crusade to rid Mystic Falls of supernatural beings. So why suddenly kill himself and the entire Council along with him?

"I don't know…I mean, it's still under investigation, so who knows what might come up?"

Bonnie wonders if it makes her a bad person that she's a little relieved that she won't have to look over her shoulder to see if someone that she had known since a child was going to come after her again.

"Will I see you in school today?" Matt asks.

Honestly, she doesn't really feel like going. But, if she ever wanted to get into college and get the hell out of Mystic Falls, school attendance was kinda necessary.

"Yeah, want a ride? I know your truck is kinda totaled after…"

"Yeah, that'd be great, thanks," Matt says quickly.

"Okay, see you there soon."

After dressing, she heads down the stairs and turns the TV on for some background noise. She only half listens to the tail-end of the weather report on the morning news. It's the next segment that manages to catch her attention.

" _Breaking news: This morning a family of four was found brutally murdered in Greenville. A neighbor claimed to have heard some odd noises coming from the house in the early hours of the morning. They found that the front door was open and the family, including two adults and two teenagers, had all been killed. Details have not yet been released as the investigation is ongoing. We will update you with more information when it becomes available."_

The whole story gives her a bad feeling. And not the kind of bad feeling that one got when they heard about a tragedy like this. The kind of feeling she got when the Salvatores had first arrived in town and bodies started piling up, the feeling that this was only a beginning of sorts.

Greenville was a small town, even smaller than Mystic Falls and was about thirty miles away and, as far as Bonnie has heard, there was no sort of supernatural history to the town like there was with Mystic Falls. But, then again, does that mean anything? Maybe it did and maybe it didn't.

Or maybe she's still wigged out from finding out that Pastor Young had apparently blown himself up along with over a dozen others along with basically everything that's happened over the past year or so.

 _It's not like there's a shortage of human evil out there,_ Bonnie reminds herself.

Bonnie shakes her head and grabs a paper coffee cup, so that she could get on her way. She grabs one for Matt, too, figuring he can use the caffeine boost.

As she heads out the door, she decides that she'll keep an eye on the news to decide if she really had any reason to believe there was anything supernatural about these murders or if she was just getting paranoid.

She really hopes that that's the case. She had to catch a break at some point, didn't she?

* * *

"How could you?" Caroline half-shrieks, ignoring the strange and alarmed looks the other students give her in the hallway.

"I've been pissing off a lot of people in our circle lately, so you're going to have to be more specific," Bonnie says tiredly, even though she knows full well what Caroline is talking about.

Caroline grabs Bonnie by the wrist and pulls her into an empty classroom, shutting the door behind them.

"I mean, putting Klaus inside Tyler's body," Caroline hisses. "How could you do that to him?"

"What? Do you think I did it for kicks or something?" Bonnie asks with a frown. "I talked with Tyler about it first and you'd all be dead if I hadn't done it."

Caroline at least has the decency to look abashed. "You…can fix it, right?"

"Of course," Bonnie replies. "There's a full moon tonight. Tell Klaus that I'll switch them back tonight. I'll meet him at his place."

"Why not the witch house? Couldn't they help—"

"Trust me, they won't want to. That why I'll be using the full moon for help." She doesn't tell Caroline that the spirits have been getting angrier and angrier with her for being so deeply embedded in vampire problems.

"Are…are you okay, Bonnie?" Caroline asks, looking at her carefully. "You seem kinda…off."

"I'm tired," Bonnie says with, exiting the empty classroom before Caroline can say anything else.

Down the hall, Bonnie sees an annoyed Matt walking away from a sad looking Rebekah. Bonnie remembers Caroline once mentioning that Rebekah had a thing for Matt. As Bonnie walks by, she can't help but scoff a little.

"And just what do you find so amusing?" Rebekah hisses with narrowed eyes.

"Only you guys could run someone off a bridge, nearly getting them killed and  _actually_ getting their friend killed, and expect everything to be okay two days later," Bonnie says dryly before continuing down the hallway, a fuming Rebekah behind her.

* * *

"Gross," Caroline mutters when she sees Klaus's burnt body.

"Don't worry, once I'm back in there, it'll be restored to its former glory."

"Don't flatter yourself," Bonnie deadpans. "Do you want this done or not? Because I'm not waiting around all night."

She lights the circle of candles and begins to chant, drawing on the full moon for power.

 _It's almost not enough,_ she realizes as she feels the blood dripping down on her face. It's been a while since that's happened.

She forces herself to power through, though. Tyler deserved to get his body back.

When she opens her eyes, Tyler is unconscious on the floor and Klaus is brushing himself off, his body rapidly healing.

"He'll be okay," Bonnie tells Caroline. "He'll just be really tired for a day or two."

"I'm going to go put him in the car," Caroline says with a nod, lifting Tyler up like he was a sack of potatoes rather than an athletic werewolf with substantial muscle mass.

With a sigh, Bonnie picks up her grimoire and stands up, shutting the book. She hears the clanking of glass as Klaus pours himself a drink. He starts to say something, but she walks out, ignoring whatever he has to say.

"Hey," Caroline says, walking over to Bonnie's car. "Thank you for doing this. And I know we sort of talked about this earlier, but, seriously, what's wrong?" Silence. "I just…I know things have been so hard for you lately and I'm sorry for how I acted this morning. You know me, I overreact and I say stupid things that I don't mean." Still no response. "But I'm almost feeling like I'm watching you drift away right in front of me and it's a little scary."

"I'm tired." That was the same exact response she'd give Caroline that morning. "I'm tired of it all. It's always one thing after another, I'm always in the middle of it, and I'm always the one who gets screwed over in the end. And…I know that a lot of the time I actually choose to be in the middle because I love you and Elena and everyone else too much to say no and let you guys fend for yourselves. Because that wouldn't be me and that wouldn't be right, but…" Bonnie sighs. "Look, I just really need to catch up on sleep or something. Just forget everything I said. I didn't…I don't know. Goodnight."

"Bonnie…"

She gets into her car before Caroline can respond any further.

She doesn't realize that she's heading in the exact opposite direction of her home until she's parking her car on the edge of some woods.

"What the…" Bonnie mutters, staring out of her windshield in confusion. She'd been so sure that she was on her way home.

_Unless…_

Her blood freezes in her veins. If magic had brought her here, then that was bad. Very bad. Emily and Esther had guided her to places without her even being aware of it and it always ended horrible for her.

The more she looks at the woods, the more she feels a strange sensation. It's kind of like a pull, a tug, telling her to go into the woods, that there was something important she needed to find.

She really wants nothing more than to completely ignore that feeling. However, she's pretty sure that if she tries to come home now, she'd probably end up right back here against her will.

Biting her lip, Bonnie reaches for her cell phone, wondering if maybe she should call someone. If she asked, Caroline would be there for an instant. But did she really want to drag someone else into something that could potentially be dangerous?

She lets out a groan as she unbuckles her seatbelt and cautiously steps out of the car.

 _One thing after another,_ she thinks to herself.  _It's always one thing after another._

As she follows the pull, she uses her cellphone as a flashlight to light her way in the dark. After fifteen minutes of absolutely nothing, she's ready to turn around and attempt to go home. But then she nearly trips over something.

Looking down, she lets out of shriek that she quickly muffles with her hand.

She'd nearly tripped over a body, its eyes wide and glassy and staring up at her. And judging, by the hole in his chest, she's pretty sure that the small lump lying about a foot away was his heart.

Looking around, she can see that there's at least two other bodies on the ground. She has no doubts that they'd have missing hearts as well if she went to go look at them.

"You really shouldn't be out here alone, darling," an accented voice calls out.

She whips around, fully prepared to send a wave of magic at whoever it was. A tall, dark figure emerges from the shadows. She shines her phone right in his face, much to his displeasure. At first she can't quite place his name or his face, but she quickly remembers.

"Kol," she says, stepping away. "Did…did you do this?"

"Hmm, much as I enjoy pissing of my brother," he begins, looking around at the bodies, "Killing off his hybrids would probably land me back in a box for at least another hundred years. Not really worth it," he says wryly, stepping closer to her.

"They were hybrids?" She takes several more steps away from him.

"Haven't you noticed it yet, darling?" He cocks his head to the side as if he's studying her.

"Noticed what?" She has a feeling that she really isn't going to like the answer, though.

"All these murders that have been occurring lately…the victims are all supernatural."


	3. Chapter 3

Bonnie's head is still whirling the next day as she gives Matt a lift for his shift at  _the Grille._

"You okay?" Matt asks, noticing Bonnie's knuckles have practically turned white from how hard she's clutching the steering wheel.

"Yeah, fine," Bonnie lies. No matter what, though, her mind keeps drifting back to the previous night.

" _All these murders that have been occurring lately…the victims are all supernatural," Kol tells her._

_Her jaw drops open and she steps farther away from him in surprise. "Wait," she whispers, shaking her head. "You're telling me that the family found murdered this morning in the town over, they…"_

" _Skinwalkers," he supplies helpfully. "Oh, come now, darling," he adds upon her look. "Surely you must have considered that creatures beyond witches, werewolves, and vampires exist."_

_Bonnie shakes her head. Yeah, she's wondered about it, but she figures that, with their luck, if anything else had existed that they would have run into by now. Then, something else occurs to her."_

" _But the Founders' Council," she replies weakly. "There's no way they were."_

" _Ah, no," Kol assures her. "That particular one was actually my doing. Wasn't easy getting all the vervain out of the good pastor. I couldn't quite pass up the irony…murder and suicide are two hefty sins. If you believe in that sort of thing, of course."_

_She stares at him speechlessly, more than a little horrified._

" _I believe the words you're looking for are thank you," he continues, stepping closer to her, boots thudding heavily in the dirt._

_Bonnie scoffs. "You made an innocent man commit suicide and mass murder and you're seriously looking for gratitude? Why the hell would I be grateful for that?"_

" _Innocent?" he repeats wryly with a smirk to match. "Hardly. They seemed perfectly content to attempt to kill you, your precious friends, and my sister simply for being what you are. Although, truth be told I actually thought that they might have been the ones doing all this," he gestures at the hybrid bodies lying on the ground. "But that's obviously giving them too much credit. Well, that and they were dead by the time these particular killings happened."_

_She doesn't know which to focus on. The fact that he's relishing in blowing up over a dozen people or that someone apparently was on a killing spree and the victims were all supernatural…that is, if Kol could be believed._

"Bonnie!" She jerks out of her thoughts, realizing that she's almost passed  _the Grille._

"Sorry," she mutters, quickly pulling into a spot.

Matt wants to ask her again what's wrong, but he doesn't. She'll deny anything being wrong once again, even though something clearly is.

"I think I'll grab a bite to go. I've got a lot of work to get done tonight," Bonnie says, unsnapping her seatbelt.

As they head into  _the Grille_ together, they notice a truck parked on the side of the road with a large red bow.

"I guess someone is get a very nice present tonight," Bonnie comments as they pass by the truck.

Matt grunts, but doesn't respond. He can't help the little twinge of jealousy. Some people had all the luck and just got things handed to them, while he…

He shakes his head, clearing his thoughts. When they enter  _the Grille,_ he heads in back to get ready and Bonnie goes to order her food. Then, she goes to sit at a table, waiting for her order to be finished.

"Hey, judgey, swap any more bodies lately?" Damon asks dryly, as he slides into the seat across from her, a bottle of bourbon in hand.

"Why?" Bonnie asks dryly. "I'd be more than happy to put you in the body of a ninety-six year old grandma…all you have to do is ask nicely. Then again, no one deserves to have  _your_ soul stuck inside them."

"Rude."

"How's Elena?" Bonnie asks.

"Oh,  _now_ you care?"

Bonnie opens her mouth to give a sharp response, but becomes distracted when she overhears the new on one of the overhead TVs.

_Yet another series of bodies have been found in the area. This time, the body of a man and a women were found in the Chub Sandhill Forest Preserve. Authorities are now looking into the possibility of a serial killer."_

"Who names the forest preserves in this state?" Damon asks, glancing upwards at the TV.

Bonnie sharply hushes him, looking up at the TV. They were already moving onto a report about some art show that was coming to a nearby town.

"There's more every day," she murmurs.

"What?" Damon asks, confused.

"All these murders," Bonnie says. "There's been a lot of them…has anyone been looking into them?"

Damon shrugs, taking a swig from his bourbon. "There's been no reports about anything highly unusual about the deaths. No blood drained, no mauling. It's probably just some human serial killer."

"And what human serial killer can leave two or more bodies to be found by anyone without getting sloppy or leaving a trace?" She pauses. "Unless…"

Damon raises his eyebrows, motioning for her to continue.

"Alaric had gone on a killing spree before…"

"That was because of the rings," Damon interjects. "Emily is the only one that knew that spell and she only made two. So unless you've been taking a page out of her book lately—"

"I haven't. Still, something's not right." She doesn't know if she really believes what Kol had told her about all the victims being supernatural, but deep in her she could feel that something was just off.

"Why are you looking for trouble?" Damon asks, eyes narrowing on her.

"I'm not," she says flatly. "Trouble has been coming to me ever since you and Stefan came to town."

Her food couldn't have come at a more perfect time. She takes the box from the server and shoves some money at him, telling him to keep the change. As she leaves, Damon reaches out and snaps a hand around her wrist.

"Let go of me," she snaps, trying to pull away. His grip is iron, though.

"Look, all this anger…you better find a way to deal with it. Otherwise it's going to take you to some pretty dark places."

She actually laughs in his face. "That's really rich coming from  _you._ "

She leaves, ignoring the feeling of Damon's icy eyes boring into her back.

* * *

With a sigh, Bonnie pulls her into a ponytail as she emerges from her bathroom in a tank top and yoga pants. Heading over to her desk, she picks up the USB drive she had found by those hybrids' bodies last night. She had been up till the wee hours of the morning trying to crack it, but made no headway.

" _Look, just stay the hell away from me," Bonnie snaps, moving to head back the way she came. She stops when she hears a crunch of plastic under her foot. Shining her phone done, she sees a USB drive. The black plastic covering had been cracked from her stepping on hit, but as she slides it out, the actual drive looks like is still intact._

" _What's that?" Kol asks suddenly appearing next to her, causing her to jump._

" _A USB," Bonnie replies. "You can put files from a computer on it so you can just plug it in and have your files on pretty much any computer," she clarifies upon his look of confusion. She supposes that Klaus must have had him in a coffin before things like computers and USBs existed._

" _Hmm, interesting. Well, then, let's go take a look at what's on it." He places a hand on his back as if to guide her, but she jerks away from him._

" _I don't think so," she says, closing her first firmly over the storage device._

_Kol's lips thin out and he lets out an annoyed exhale._

" _So how long do you think it'll be before you're a target? You can't afford to turn my assistance down."_

" _What do you care so much?" Bonnie asks. "Last I checked, Rebekah had taken the only white oak stake in the world after Alaric died."_

" _You say that like Rebekah can actually be trusted with such a thing. Besides, unlike my siblings, I don't quite believe in there being limitations when it comes to death. If someone really put their mind to it, I would be surprised if they could find a way to kill us. You almost managed to kill Niklaus with your magic."_

_She doesn't bother to correct him and tell him that it was actually the magic of a hundred dead witches. "Well, I'm sure this maybe come as a shocker to you, but I'm really not all that concerned about what happens to you and your family." With that, she gives him a try smile and walks away again, her curls whipping around her face._

" _You better hope that if they decide to come for you that you're stronger than they," he calls out after her._

Bonnie sharply jerks out of her reverie when her phone starts to ring. It's Matt calling.

"Hey, Matt, you get off early or something?"

"Uh, no. I'm on break, actually. I just wanted to let you know that I don't need to keep mooching rides off of you. Rebekah…she, uh, gave me a new truck." He sounds a little sheepish as he says this.

"Oh, wow," Bonnie replies, blinking in surprise.

"Yeah. At first I was going to tell her where she could take her truck and shove it and hope that she didn't try to drown me again, but…"

"I don't blame you for keeping it," Bonnie says. She knows that Matt couldn't exactly afford a new truck.

"Yeah, anyway. I also wanted to check up on you. I know you keep saying that you're fine, but I'm not so convinced."

Bonnie sighs. It's not that she wants to lie to Matt. It's just that she doesn't even really know what's going on herself. And, no matter what it is, she especially doesn't want Matt to get involved. If someone (or something) was really killing off supernatural beings, Matt should be safe because he's human. She certainly wasn't going to risk that.

"Yeah. I swear, everything's fine. Or at least it will be. I'm just in a weird headspace right now because of everything that's happened."

"Okay…" Matt replies, clearly not appeased by that response. "Look, I got to get back to work, but if you need anything…"

"Thanks, Matt," Bonnie answers with a smile.

As she sets her phone down on the dark wood of her desk, she turns her attention back to the USB drive. Truth be told, she had no idea if it belonged to the killer or one of the hybrids. It was so heavily encrypted, that she couldn't get anything off it.

She pushes it into the side of her laptop and, just as she expected, the same encryption that had made her want to throw her computer out a window appeared in bright green letters. She likes to think that she's fairly tech-saavy…at least to an extent. She's certainly no computer whiz and has no idea how to make heads or tails out of this whole thing.

Maybe tomorrow she could talk one of the tech geeks at school into helping her out…

All she knows is that if this USB does belong to the killer and there's any answers to be found on it, she's not going to like a single one of those answers.

* * *

As Bonnie heads downstairs the next morning, she pauses. She could smell that coffee had already been made and someone was rustling papers in the kitchen. Cautiously, entering the kitchen, she's surprised to find her dad sitting at the table flipping through a hefty stack of papers.

"Morning," he greets her, looking up from his papers briefly.

"When did you get home?" Bonnie asks.

"Early this morning," he replies. "You were still asleep and I didn't want to wake you because it's a school night."

"So, are you going to be home for a while or are you going to be sent on another case?" she asks as she moves to pour herself a cup of coffee. Her dad tried to come home as often as he could, but work was demanding and he couldn't always help it.

"Actually, I've been put on a case here."

She almost drops her coffee all over the floor.

"What, you mean all the murders that have been happening in this area lately?" she asks, turning to face her dad, hoping that her hands aren't visibly shaking. She's clutching the mug so tightly, she's a little surprised the handle doesn't break off.

She remembers that the news report had mentioned last night that authorities were on the case, but she didn't think that they had meant that the FBI were being brought in. She also can't believe her dad had been assigned to this case.

"Actually, it's been more than lately. A lot of people seem have either died or mysteriously disappeared over the past year and a half," her father replies. He frowns as he finishes his words.

"And they put you on this case even though there's an obvious potential for a conflict of interest?"

"They were concerned, but in the end the bureau decided I'd be more of an asset than a liability on this case." He looks up at her. "Are you okay?"

"Yeah. You know how I always get a little nervous when you're on a case?" That definitely isn't a lie.

"Don't worry, baby girl, I've been doing this a long time." He glances down at his watch. "You should be getting off to school. We can talk more over dinner tonight…mainly about how your grades have been slipping."

Bonnie gives him a tight smiles before grabbing her keys and bag and heading out the door. As she stands on her front porch, she lets out a hefty sigh and feels a deep seated worry set in her bones.

Honestly, she could never tell if her dad had believed Grams when she talked about witchcraft and pretended he didn't in hopes that she wouldn't get involved in that or if he really thought that Grams had just been a crazy drunk.

Either way…

She'd like to have hope that her dad is safe since he's human and all, but who knows who (or what) for that matter is really going on a killing spree. And if they (or it) found out her dad (or anyone, really) is investigating it…who knows what they (or it) would do? Not to mention if Kol is really telling the truth about there being more than just witches, vampires, and werewolves out there… Then, there's also the fact that Kol also killed the Founders' Council for apparently having discovered them all.

God, things were getting more and more complicated.

* * *

"Wow, you weren't kidding when you said this was complicated," Jake tells her as they sat in a computer lab during a free period.

Jake was the head of tech club and was usually put in charge of anything needing technology from school plays to official Mystic Falls events. If anyone could help her, short of some extremely advanced and expensive professional help, it'd be him.

"Yeah, I don't really understand any of it," Bonnie says, tucking a dark curl behind her ear.

"What is all this anyway?" Jake asks, pushing his glasses up his nose.

"Uhm, it's something that I found in my Grams old house," Bonnie says. The lie rolls of her tongue flawlessly. She seems to be doing a lot of that lately. "Curiosity is kinda getting the better of me."

"Well, whatever it is, I think your grandma definitely wanted to keep it a secret," he says. "But, if I'm right, I think this is a code. If you know the password, you just type it in the bottom here," he gestures to the bottom of the screen where the encryption seemingly ends, "And then everything should unlock." He leans back in his seat and runs a hand through his spiky black hair.

 _Great,_ Bonnie thinks.  _And how the hell am I supposed to figure out the password?_

"Well, hopefully, something will come to me then." She takes the USB from him after he pulls it out of the computer. "Thanks for your help, Jake."

"Sure thing. Let me know if you figure it out."

She smiles and nods, but, much to her disappointment, she has a feeling she'll never figure it out.

* * *

_She's standing…somewhere. She can't exactly tell where. All she knows is that it's pitch black and she literally can't see a thing._

_Then, like alight had suddenly snapped on, she could see everything. In front of her, laid a pile of dead bodies. She tries to scream, but no sound comes out._

_She recognizes some of the faces from pictures in the news. And then there were the others—Caroline, Elena, Tyler, Stefan, Damon…and herself._

_She squeezes her eyes shut, but she can't run away from it, can't scream._

_A whispering begins. It starts softly and becomes louder and louder and it reminds her of the old witch house, how the spirits of the dead witches would sometimes whisper and hiss things at her. There's only one word she can decipher out of it all._

" _Vicki, Vicki, Vicki, Vicki…"_

Bonnie's eyes snap open and she places a hand on her rapidly beating heart. It almost feels like it's about to come bursting out of her chest any moment. She shakily lays back, trying to process it all.

 _It's a message,_ she realizes.  _It has to be. But…Vicki? What about Vicki? What the hell could she have to do with anything? Unless…_

She practically launches herself out of bed, nearly tripping over her bedsheets. She impatiently waits for her laptop to load, jamming the USB port into the side of her compute.

When the bright green lettering pops up again, she quickly types  _Vicki._ An error message pops up. She slumps back into her cheer, frustration and disappointment creeping up again. Because of her dreams she'd been so sure…

She tries again, this time typing  _Vicki Donovan._

To her surprise the green code and black screen bleed away to reveal a white one with black typing.

**Virginia – List 1**

Klaus Mikaelson – 150

Elijah Mikaelson - 100

Kol Mikaelson - 100

Rebekah Mikaelson - 100

Bonnie Bennett - 75

Tyler Lockwood - 50

Dylan McDonald – 50

Sylvia Perez – 50

Gray Stevens -50

Jared Lee – 50

Alanna Burke -50

Nathaniel Higashimura – 50

Dean Smith – 50

Kimberly Diaz – 50

Christopher Burt - 50

Samantha Mills - 50

Zoe Hart – 50

Daniel Jung – 45

Kristen Bernhardt – 40

Thomas MacMillan - 40

**Payment sent upon visual confirmation.**

**Press ENTER for next list.**

Eyebrows furrowing, Bonnie presses her enter key. She's faced with another code. Only this time, her newly discovered password doesn't work on this list.

 _Okay, but what_ _ **is**_ _this list,_ Bonnie wonders, hitting the backspace to get back to the first list.  _None of this makes any sen…_

And then her blood in her veins goes cold as she realized exactly what this is.

_It's a hitlist._

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So, I post on ff.net and here and I don't often put authors notes up here, but I have tendency to forget what I do and don't tell my readers on both sites, lol. Anyway, I don't believe I mentioned this on here, but I'm using season 4 of Teen Wolf as a lot of inspiration for this fic (while putting my own twists on it), so if you watch Teen Wolf, that's where the similarities are coming from.


	4. Chapter 4

"You're not going to the memorial dressed like that, are you?" He father asks, looking over the jeans and floral print top Bonnie had thrown on.

"The memorial?" Bonnie asks confused.

"Yes, the one for Pastor Young and the twelve others who died on his farm? The one that school has been cancelled for today?"

 _Wow, am I really_ _ **that**_ _out of it?_ Bonnie wonders.

"Right. I guess I'm just too used to the usual routine," Bonnie says with a strained smile. "I'll go throw something else on real quick and then we can go."

She sighs as she digs through her closet, looking for something more presentable. She pulls on a black peplum dress and grabs a black clutch to match.

Heading over to her desk, she opens the drawer and pulls a piece of paper out. Early this morning, she had checked the list again and saw that it had changed from the night before. This time, three hybrid names were crossed out—presumably the same hybrids she had stumbled upon in the woods.

Should she tell her friends about this? She still has so many questions about it herself. There was definitely more than one list and even though the list she printed out had been labeled  _Virginia,_ she has a feeling that there was more than one list for the state. Mainly because there were some names from the news that hadn't been printed on the list. And if someone is out to kill supernatural beings, then shouldn't the Salvatores and everyone else be on the list, too?

Why break it up into multiple lists, though? Was it a security thing? And how was the list being updated?

Or maybe she shouldn't be looking for any logic in here at all.

Bonnie sighs and picks up the list, folding it into her clutch along with her cellphone.

"Oh, thank God, I thought you'd take three hours to get ready," her dad jokes as she comes back down the stairs.

"Be very grateful that my hair and makeup were already done with," Bonnie shoots back.

The drive to the memorial is silent, but it's a comfortable silence. Her dad has never been much of a conversationalist and he's fine with that. It gives her more time to think about what she'll tell everyone about what she's discovered…if she'll tell them.

"Go ahead with your friends," her father tells her when they enter the church. "I have to go speak with Sheriff Forbes."

They'd gotten there really early, so not many people had arrived yet, but Elena and Matt were helping out, placing programs in the pews.

"Hey," Bonnie says, awkwardly approaching Elena. "How…how've you been?"

"Uh, it's been…really rough," Elena replies honestly. "Stefan's been trying to help me, but we're thinking that maybe Caroline might be better. Somehow she's managed to get a handle on this whole vampire thing better than any of us have." She pauses, looking down. "You know, part of me thought that maybe if I'd died for real that…somehow, someway things would be better. I don't, many I've watched those stupid  _Final Destination_ movies one too many times, but sometimes I kinda wonder if maybe I'd really meant to die with my parents and that's why our lives and everything is so screwed up." She pauses and wipes some tears out of her eyes with a little scoff. "And, God, I can't stop crying, either!"

Bonnie gives Elena a sad smile and pulls her into her arms. Does it frustrate her how most of their problems connect back to Elena? Of course. Any sane person would find it frustrating. But it's not like it's all been a cakewalk for Elena, either.

"So how come no one ever thought to mention that your father is an FBI agent?" Damon hisses from behind her.

"What does that matter to you?" Bonnie asks, letting go of Elena and turning to face Damon.

"Since apparently he's investigating some of the latest murders as well as digging into some past ones. How much does he know about us?"

"Honestly?" Bonnie replies with a sigh. "I don't know. Grams would tell him about witchcraft, but I honestly don't have a clue if he just thought she was crazy like everyone else did or if he's just playing dumb."

"Great. Well, I'll be sure to find that out."

"I know you are not about to go do something involving my father that'll make me set you on fire a second time. Only, this time Elena won't be convincing me to put you out," Bonnie tells him, giving him a hard look.

"Bonnie!" Elena exclaims, doe eyes widening in shock.

"I already have a whole set of mommy issues added to the ones that already existed thanks to him. I really don't need a repeat with my dad," Bonnie tells Elena before focusing back on Damon. "Look, I don't like my dad being on this case either, but—"

"We have a huge freaking problem," Caroline interrupts, coming to join them with Stefan and Tyler in tow.

"Apparently there's a new hunter in town," Tyler says. "Shot me with wooden bullets and everything." His face and tone screams  _'Can't I ever catch a goddamn break?'_ and Bonnie can commiserate with him on that one.

"He would have been dead for sure if he was a normal vampire," Stefan adds. "So I think it's safe to say that save for some hybrids, this guy knows what he's doing."

Biting her lip, Bonnie looks down and snaps her clutch open. Pulling out the list she'd printed, she unfolds it and shows it to them.

"What's this?" Damon asks with a frown, taking it from her.

"A hit list," Bonnie replies. "I found a USB that someone had encrypted the hell out of, but I figured out how to unlock it and…" she sighs. "There's more lists on it that I can't unlock and I think there's more for Virginia alone because there's some names from news reports that haven't popped up on this one. Also, someone is still able to edit it somehow because these three names," she leans over and points them out, "Weren't crossed out till this morning."

"Those three were hybrids," Tyler says, his lips thinning out in anger.

"Wait, if this hunter guy has something to do with this and he's already killed three hybrids, why is Tyler still alive?" Stefan asks, eyebrows furrowing.

"Unless it was someone different," Damon grumbles.

"So…there could be other lists that the rest of us are on?" Elena asks, wide-eyed.

"Yeah, I think so," Bonnie says solemnly, pulling the list from Damon's hands. He's reluctant to let it go.

"What's with these numbers here?" Caroline asks, leaning closer to Bonnie and running a finger down the list.

"Prices," Damon says before Bonnie can respond.

"What? No way someone would take on Klaus for a hundred and fifty dollars," Caroline responds incredulously.

"No, they probably mean thousands…hell, I don't even think it'd be a stretch to say millions," Stefan says, frowning.

"Who the hell could possibly have enough money to pull this off, especially if this is just one list out of God knows how many?" Matt asks. "I mean, unless Bill Gates or something somehow knows about the supernatural world, then I don't get how this is feasible."

"There's also the question of how they would also know who is and isn't supernatural," Bonnie adds.

Damon opens his mouth to say something, but then the organ starts to play. They all shuffle themselves into a pew, even more somber than before. Bonnie takes a seat at the end closest to the aisle.

Bonnie glances over and she sees her dad in a pew with Sheriff Forbes, both looking more than a little displeased with one another.

As Carol opens up the ceremony with one of her usual speeches about community and togetherness, Bonnie begins to feel a chill set in her bones. She doesn't know what it is. Maybe all that talk about hit lists or whatnot…but she feels her fight or flight response kicking in.

She snaps out of her reverie when Elena moves past her and heads to the front to give a small speech of her own.

"What can you say to a community that's already experienced so much loss?" Elena begins, her voice a little shaky.

She sees Tyler, who had gone to join his mom in the front pew, suddenly twist to look up at the balcony that overlooked the pews and front of the church. Then, he makes a mad dash for Elena, tackling her to the ground as several shots ring out.

Caroline ducks to the ground, reaching on either side of her to pull Bonnie and Matt down with her.

"I saw him, the guy, he's the same one that tried killing Tyler this morning," Caroline hisses.

Before she can respond, her dad's crouched down next to her, his gun out.

"Keep low to the ground, but make your way out of here as quickly as possible," he instructs her.

"But—"

"No arguments, go!" And then he's up, looking for the shooter.

"Come on," Caroline whispers. "This hunter or whatever he is probably left by now. He was AWOL the instant he shot Tyler this morning. If he's a part of this hit list thing, he's out to collect some money, not get killed in the process."

"This is really bad," Bonnie gasps as she, Caroline, and Matt crawl their way through pews, heading towards the church doors. Thankfully they manage to make it out without incident.

"If he's willing to try and kill us in a public place…who the fuck knows what he and others will try," Damon says. She jumps at how suddenly he appears next to her. "And considering he just tried to kill Elena, I think it's safe to say that we're all one some version of this list."

"God, can't we ever be given a moment to put people to rest?" Elena asks angrily as she storms over to them, tears shining in her brown eyes. "It's always one thing after another."

Stefan hushes her, pulling her close and assuring her that everything will be alright.

Damon watches them for a moment before turning back to Bonnie. "You said that the lists were encrypted…how did you break it?"

"I found the answer in a dream that I'm pretty sure the spirits sent me."

"And they couldn't conveniently have told you how to unlock  _all_ the lists?" Damon asks sardonically.

"I'm surprised they're giving me anything at all," Bonnie snaps. "They haven't exactly been my biggest fan lately."

She turns around as she hears her dad begin to address the borderline hysterical crowd that had gathered outside.

"Everything is under control," Rudy assures them.

Bonnie glares at Damon as he lets out an audible scoff.

"Thankfully no one appears to be injured, but unfortunately the memorial service must be postponed until further notice. Now, if you have any information that can assist in the investigation of this matter, please speak with either myself or Sheriff Forbes or one of her deputies."

"Elena," Rudy says, approaching the brunette in question. "I'm going to need you to come with me to answer some questions. The rest of you should head home." The tone of his face tells Bonnie that in her case it's not so much a suggestion, but a direct order.

Elena reluctantly pulls away from Stefan and nods, following Bonnie's father.

"What?" Bonnie snaps upon the look Stefan and Damon are both giving her. "This is part of his job."

"Yeah, except his  _job_ can become very problematic for us depending on what he does or doesn't know, what he does or doesn't find out, and what he will or won't do with that information."

Bonnie sighs and blows a wayward curl that had fallen into her face.

It's not even ten o' clock in the morning and the day has already been shot to hell on a level that isn't even funny.

* * *

"What the bloody hell are you doing here?" Klaus growls later that afternoon when he catches Kol in the living room with the oldest, most expensive bottle of scotch in the house. "I thought you were off wreaking havoc in Spain or wherever."

"If I didn't know any better, I'd almost think you weren't happy to see me, Nik."

"I don't suppose you by any chance had something to do with my hybrids that were recently slaughtered," Klaus says with narrowed eyes. "Because if so, I'll—"

"You'll shove a dagger in me and throw me in a box until you're bored, or until you need me, or until Elijah and/or Rebekah have a sudden attack of conscience," Kol drawls before tacking a swig of scotch. "Come on, Nik, we're over a thousand years old. Can't you at least  _try_ to be more creative?"

Klaus's lips curl up in anger.

"You may be interested to know that another one of your precious hybrids was nearly killed today along with your precious doppelgänger…although, I suppose she's really not all that important anymore now that she's been turned."

"What do you know that I don't?"

Kol sighs. "Am I really the only one that pays attention to anything? Three of your hybrids were murdered, another nearly murdered, along with that worthless Gilbert girl, and a number of other supernaturals have been killed within the past couple of weeks."

"And what? You think someone is out to get us?" Klaus laughs. "And you all think  _I'm_ the paranoid one. Oh, and you better replace that scotch at some point," he adds on his way out.

Kol scoffs and takes one final swig before throwing the bottle on the floor. The glass shatters and whatever scotch had been left pools among the shards. It would certainly annoy Klaus and Rebekah, being the neat freaks they were.

 _I suppose I should pay another visit to that Bennett witch tonight,_ he muses.  _Perhaps she found something off that device she found._

* * *

"You know, considering that there's someone…well, probably more than one someone, trying to kill us, I'm not so sure this is a good idea," Bonnie says dryly as they gather at a picnic table outside of school later that night.

Her dad had called her to let her know that he would be working late and that she should lock the doors. School would also be cancelled until Monday.

She has a feeling that 'working late' was really a code for 'pulling an all-nighter', but if she's wrong and her dad comes home and she's not there…it wouldn't be pretty.

"Look, we've dealt with a lot and we haven't had a chance to deal with it or properly mourn. Instead, we've started brushing it off or we make a joke about it," Stefan says. "And at some point, we need to let ourselves grieve if we're going to go on." He picks up a paper lantern from the pile of them he had put on the table. "The Japanese use these as a symbol of letting go of the past and I think that's what we need to do."

"We're not Japanese," Bonnie and Damon say at the same time. They look at each other and frown.

"Seriously, Stef? Someone's willing to pay thousands and/or millions to have us killed and we should be working on figuring  _that_ out instead of wasting our time with this," Damon adds.

"That problem will still be there in the morning," Stefan shoots back.

 _Yeah, and will we?_ Bonnie wants to ask, but she chooses to keep her mouth shut.

Stefan picks up a lighter, flicks it on and holds the flame to the base of the lamp until it lights.

"This is for Zach and Lexi," he says, passing the lighter on to Caroline.

"This is for my dad," the blonde says quietly.

"And for my dad and my Uncle Mason," Tyler adds, lighting one of his own.

"This is for Anna, Vicki, my parents, Jenna, and Alaric," Jeremy says as he lights his lantern. He holds the lighter out to Bonnie.

She stares at it for a moment before tentatively taking it and picking up one of the white lanterns. "For Grams."

She holds the lighter out to Damon.

"Yeah, I'm not wasting my time with this," he scoffs, turning and heading towards his car.

Even though she kinds agrees with him, Bonnie rolls her eyes and passes the lighter to Matt instead.

"For Vicki."

"This is for my parents, Jenna, Alaric, everyone that's died recently, for everyone we lost…for us."

They begin releasing their lanterns, the white paper a stark contrast in the night sky. As Bonnie watches her float up towards the stars, she thinks that she should feel lighter. But instead, she feels the opposite…like she's drowning.

She realizes that she's felt that way for a while now.

And as she finds herself driving towards the cemetery that feeling doesn't lessen.

As she walks to her grandmother's headstone, she realizes that it's been a while since she comes to see her.

"God, I really wish you were here to tell me what to do because I'm so lost and confused right now," she murmurs.

She has a feeling that Grams would be lecturing her about getting involved in vampire business in the first place.

"…what difference does it make?" she hears a voice muttering.

 _Damon?_ Bonnie asks, looking in the direction of the voice. She steps towards.

"Because, in the end, when you lose somebody, every candle, every prayer, is not gonna make up for the fact that the only thing you have left is hole in your life where that somebody you cared about used to be and a rock with a birthdate on it that I'm pretty sure is wrong. So  _thanks, buddy_ for leaving me here to babysit. Because I should have been long gone. I didn't get the girl."

Bonnie winces as she snaps a twig underfoot.

"Eavesdropping is rude, judgey," Damon tells her, making her jump slightly as he flashes in front of her.

"I didn't eavesdrop," Bonnie replies. "Or at least I didn't mean to. I was here to see Grams."

"What? Lighting a stupid lantern wasn't fulfilling enough for you?"

She doesn't respond.

"Has anyone come for you yet?" he asks.

"What?"

"I don't know if you noticed, but you're really high up on the list, Bonnie. You're just underneath the originals and something tells me that even if we took a look at the other lists, you'd still be pretty high up."

"Yeah, kinda hard to not notice," Bonnie mutters.

"Well, that means that either whoever set this up really wants you dead. Or they consider you to be a hell of a threat. Or both. And you're a hell of a lot more killable than the originals, so logically a number of people will be coming to cash in on you."

"Why are you so convinced that it's more than one person trying to kill us?" Bonnie asks. "I mean, the way hit lists typically work is that the person who wants someone dead hires a specific someone to make it happen."

"Because I think it's a dead pool of sorts," Damon answers.

"A dead pool?" The only time Bonnie has ever heard of a dead pool was in reference to the comic book character and she has a feeling that's  _not_ what Damon is talking about.

"It's an assassination free for all. A group of people are all given the same list or lists and they set out to collect us much as they can."

"Wait, you think that someone is trying to make a game out of killing us and other supernatural beings?" Bonnie asks, more than a little horrified.

"Well, that certainly is an interesting theory," an accented voice calls out. Bonnie freezes as she recognizes it as Kol's voice. "And it sounds like you've found something quite interesting on that device you found last night"

Bonnie and Damon just stare at him.

"So…let's talk about what exactly we're going to do about this situation?"


	5. Chapter 5

"Wait, you think that someone is trying to make a game out of killing us and other supernatural beings?" Bonnie asks, more than a little horrified.

"Well, that certainly is an interesting theory," an accented voice calls out. Bonnie freezes as she recognizes it as Kol's voice. "And it sounds like you've found something quite interesting on that device you found last night"

Bonnie and Damon just stare at him.

"So…let's talk about what exactly we're going to do about this situation, shall we?"

"I don't think so," Damon says, stepping in front of Bonnie.

"Oh, now, don't be a fool," Kol tells the other vampire, his voice taking on a dangerous edge. "Somebody wants us dead and considering I could kill both of you right here without so much as blinking, I'd say you'd rather have me on your team."

Damon opens his mouth again to shut Kol down, but Bonnie shoves her way in front of him.

"Why would we trust  _you_?" Bonnie asks.

The Original grins, his teeth gleaming white even in the dark night.

"I don't give a damn whether you trust me or not. You don't really have much of a choice in this."

Damon scoffs and then replies, "Like hell—"

A gunshot rings out and before Bonnie can comprehend what is happening, Damon's on the ground in front of her, groaning in pain. She looks over at Kol who is suddenly standing next to her now and she realizes what has happened.

The shot had been meant for  _her,_ but Kol had grabbed Damon and shoved him in front of her, forcing him to take the bullet for her.

"What the—"

More gunshots ring out.

She doesn't even have time to gasp when Kol grabs both her and Damon, speeding them away. When she finally catches her bearings again, she realizes that the three of them are now in the foyer of the Mikaelson mansion.

"Jesus fucking Christ," Damon swears, ripping his black shirt open, buttons flying across the room.

The bullet had hit him in the top of his abdomen. It would have undoubtedly hit her in the heart if Kol hadn't stepped in.

Still letting out a string of colorful swears, Damon dips his fingers into the bullet wound. Bonnie cringes at the squishing sound it makes. After a few moments, he emerges with a bloody wooden bullet.

"You could have gotten him killed," Bonnie snaps at Kol.

"Yeah, that would have been a real tragedy.

"You know what?" Damon says, examining the bullet. "I can't wait to find out who this son of a bitch is. I'm going to have  _a lot_ of fun killing him."

Bonnie looks at the bullet he's holding and as she does, something occurs to her.

"I don't think this hunter is the same person that killed the hybrids the other night," she sayd. "Their hearts were ripped out and no human has that kind of strength."

"That's assuming the hunter who just attacked us is human or doesn't have some sort of preternatural ability," Kol points out.

"Then again," Bonnie muses, half ignoring him. "Why would someone who is supernatural be a part of this? Wouldn't they be on one of the lists, too?"

"Maybe they don't care. Or perhaps whoever is running this…dead pool is only putting certain supernaturals on the list," Kol counters. "We need to find out who is on these other lists."

"Sounds fun and all, but I'm going to go actually find out who just shot me tonight," Damon says dryly.

"Damon, you know there's a good chance that you and the others are on these lists," she says. It's enough to get him to pause. "There was this dream I had, it's what let me get the password in the first place… _all_ of us were dead in that dream and I'm pretty sure that was some sort of creepy foreshadowing. And there's more…"

He raises his eyebrows at her.

"The password for the first list…it was Vicki Donovan."

"The only people that know about her—what really happened to her—are our group…and I guess the police department knows it was supernatural. And let's face it, Mystic Falls' finest aren't all the fine and could never pull something like this off, so unless somebody in our circle is way more of an evil mastermind than we ever thought…"

"Somebody knows  _way_ too much about us," Bonnie finishes.

"Who the hell is Vicki Donovan?" Kol asks.

"Matt's sister. Damon turned her into a vampire and Stefan staked her," Bonnie pointedly looks at Damon.

"It's a lot more complicated than that…also, I don't recall you mentioning any of this back at the memorial. Why do you know more than you're letting on?" Damon asks.

"Because I know the more I say, the more you and everyone else are gonna demand answers that I don't know how to get."

"Right, as fascinating as this little spat is," Kol says drolly, "We have bigger problems."

"Like, I said, I'm gonna go find that hunter and tear his spleen out."

"Damon—" Bonnie begins, but he's already gone.

"Ah, well. Maybe natural selection will finally do its job and end him," Kol says with a grin.

Bonnie glances over at him. Then, she lets out a scoff of disgust before moving to leave. She almost groans when she remembers that he car is back by the high school, which was several blocks away. Not to mention her father will be  _furious_ if he came home to discover she isn't there.

"Do you really think it's a wise choice to be all on your own in the dark, considering you've nearly been killed twice today?"

"Please, it's just another Thursday. Besides, what do you care if I live or die?" She doesn't wait for an answer as she heads out of the Mikaelson mansion, intent on getting as far away as possible, as fast as possible.

"Well, it's simple, really," Kol replies, following her outside, much to her displeasure. "You're obviously the key to all of this."

She resists the urge to groan at that. It's not that she hasn't realized it already, it's just that…out of all the witches in the world, why her? Why is it always her? Is it because she's a Bennett? It's not like she's the last Bennett in the entire world; Lucy's still out there somewhere and she's sure there had to be more distant relations that she's never met or heard of. So, again, why is it always her in these messes?

"Whatever, I don't care. Just stay away from me," Bonnie snaps, walking faster. He, of course, has no problem keeping up with her.

"Come on, dar—" When he reaches out to place a hand on her shoulder, she interrupts him by sending a wave of magic to break every bone in his hand. Then, just for good measure, she does the same to his legs. It sends him to the ground with a groan.

Okay, so maybe that wasn't exactly the brightest idea. Kol is volatile and unpredictable and if he decides to come after her, she's not entirely sure how well she can defend herself, considering her relationship with the spirts was shaky at best and there wasn't much around that she could channel to help her out at the moment.

She walks faster, bracing herself for any possible fight. It never comes, though.

* * *

 _She's really something, this witch,_ Kol thinks as he stands on his newly healed legs.

It's nice to see that she has quite a bit of fight in her. He was going to need that.

He's always respected power and she has a lot more than she gives herself credit for.

Still, though, it really would be a problem if she got killed. Especially since she seemed to be only one who had a chance of figuring out just what exactly is going on.

He straightens out his clothes and begins walking in the direction Bonnie had left in to ensure that no harm came to her. He also makes sure to keep out of sight, not really wanting to find out what other bones of his she would break at the moment.

* * *

_She's standing in a damp, dark, and cold cave. Looking for any signs of where she's at, her eyes come to rest on an altar that was scantly illuminated by a single crack of moonlight that managed to penetrate from the roof of the cave._

_As Bonnie approaches that altar, she realizes that it's not an altar at all. It looks to be a tomb, a carving of a stone figure laid out on top of it. But as she looks closer, she becomes more confused. The sarcophagus appeared to be seamless, with no lid._

" _Strange thing, isn't it? Being frozen like that? Two thousand years of this can drive one mad." A deep, baritone voice calls out. She can't see where—or_ _ **who**_ _—the voice has come from, though._

_Feeling the icy chill of fear work its way from her stomach and up through her throat, she looks back at the sarcophagus._

_Being frozen like that…_

_She feels horror set in when she realizes that it's not a sarcophagus at all. The figure lying on top of the stone slap was a person, a person who had been frozen into stone._

The ringing of her cell phone jerks her awake.

She lays there, breathing heavily and unable to make heads or tails of what she had just seen.

 _For once, why can't it just be clear-cut?_ She wonders, running a hand through her hair. The tangled curls were slightly damp with cold sweat.

With a sigh, she reaches over to her nightstand to grab her ringing cellphone. Glancing at the lit up screen, she sees that it's Damon calling.

"I really hope you have a good reason for calling me at this time?" she grumbles when she answers the phone. She is slightly grateful the call waking her up from such a freaky dream, though.

"Let's just say I found myself in a bit of pickle," is Damon's reply.


	6. Chapter 6

The ringing of her cellphone jerks her awake.

With a sigh, she reaches over to her nightstand to grab the noisy device. Glancing at the lit up screen, she sees that it's Damon calling.

"I really hope you have a good reason for calling me at this time," she grumbles when she answers the phone. She is slightly grateful that the call wakes her up from such a freaky dream, though.

"Let's just say I found myself in a bit of pickle," is Damon's reply.

And that's how she finds herself driving to a trailer that someone had decided to park in the middle of the woods. And if that wasn't the perfect set up for a horror movie that starred a crazy axe murderer, Bonnie didn't know what was.

Needless to say, Damon would owe her big time for this one.

"You have got to be kidding me!" Bonnie says as she opens the door to the trailer.

Damon stood in the center, multiple metal spikes through his body. The spikes were attached to thick metal cable wires and Bonnie had no doubts that the wires were hooked up to some explosive device. Meaning that with one wrong move, Damon could kill them both right there.

"What part of this would seem like a joke?" Damon asks, his voice dry.

"The part where you think I'm going to get blown up with you while trying to save you," Bonnie shoots back, taking a couple steps back.

"You are not seriously going to leave me here!"

"What am I supposed to do?" Bonnie asked. "Disable the bomb? I'm not James freaking Bond!"

"You're a witch! Can't you just use some magic to disable it?!"

"I don't know! It's not like I've ever tried before," Bonnie yelled back.

They glare at each other for a few moments. Then, with a sigh, Bonnie begins looking around, thinking.

"Of all the stupid things…" Bonnie mutters more to herself than him. "If we do both die, you are going to stay far, far away from me in ghost world or whatever the hell you want to call it."

"Gladly," he replies with a tense smile.

"Okay…so…I know nothing about bombs and, knowing our kind of luck, trying to magically disable it could probably set it off," she says, thinking aloud. "I'm going to use magic to get the spikes out of you and you're going to get us out of here _really_ fast."

"Great plan," Damon says dryly.

"Do you have a better one? And just remember, this is the nth time I've stupidly put my ass on the line for you, so drop the attitude."

Pressing his lips together in a thin line, Damon grumbles, "Just do it.

She nods and takes a deep breath, trying push down whatever nervousness she feels building up in the pit of her stomach. Then, she releases a quick burst of magic, yanking the spikes right out of Damon.

She has no time to gather her senses before she feels like she's flying through the night air. She expects to hear an explosion, but it doesn't come. Apparently they hadn't detonated the bomb after all.

"Never again," Bonnie tells Damon when he sets her down. "Next time you get yourself in some crazy predicament like this, you're on your own."

Damon actually has the audacity to roll his eyes at her.

She shakes her head in response and begins to walk away, half grumbling to herself. Damon reaches out, grabbing her by the shoulder and pulls her back, turning her to face him.

"Thank you," he says, his voice sincere.

"You're welcome. Although, you really need to stop jumping in half-assed liked you always do."

He snorts. There is literally no winning with her.

She walks away again and this time he follows her.

"What now?" Bonnie asks, looking over at him with her eyebrows raised.

"Just making sure you get to your car okay. Apparently a bunch of psychos want us all dead," he says, his voice a little too casual for her tastes.

" _Now_ you decide to take this seriously? You weren't a few hours ago."

"I was taking it seriously before…I was just trying to take a more proactive approach at dealing with it."

She can only blink and shake her head in response before continuing to head back, him walking side by side with her.

* * *

_This time the scene in front of her is one she recognizes, only it's something that had happened a year ago._

_She's in the boardinghouse with Damon, Mason Lockwood chained to a chair. Damon has just pulled her out of his grip and she's making a quick getaway._

_She had known what would probably happen to him, what Damon would do to him. She didn't want to be around to witness it._

_She told herself it was for the greater good. Mason was with Katherine and would keep coming after them, especially after this._

_Still, she got out of there as fast as she could as if not being there for it would somehow absolve her of any and all culpability._

This time when Bonnie awakens, the sun is beginning to poke through her curtains. Lucky for her, school has been cancelled for the rest of the week because, after such a crazy night, she'd only gotten a few hours of sleep.

It looks like she had gotten the next piece of the puzzle, though, and that was more important than sleep.

Brushing her messy curls out of her face, she settles into her desk chair, nervously tapping her fingers against the dark wood of her desk while she waits for her laptop to load. She already knows what she's going to find and she's not thrilled by it.

Caroline and Elena were going to be on this list. So were Stefan and Damon. They wouldn't be worth as much as she was, or Tyler…but they would be easier to kill if the right strategist put their mind to it.

Then, there was the matter of _how_ the key to unlocking these lists were the names of people they knew. Names of people who had died because of them.

 _Could someone be trying to send a message to us?_ She wonders.

She jams the USB drive into her laptop and bypasses the first list. This time, when the box pops up, prompting her to type in a password, she spells out _**Mason Lockwood.**_

Then, just as she knew, another list pops up.

**Virginia – List 2**

Helen Valentine – 15

Maricrus Ochoa - 15

Conner Ellis – 12

Nicholas Ellis - 12

James Ellis - 12

Gabriel Maldonado - 10

Emily Kroll - 7

Damon Salvatore – 5

Stefan Salvatore – 5

Caroline Forbes - .5

Elena Gilbert - .25

She scrolls down. The list goes on and…dozens of names filling the screen.

_How are there possible this many supernatural just in Virginia alone? And how would someone know who is and isn't supernatural? It's not like we go around advertising it._

With every piece of the puzzle she unlocks, she finds herself being left with more questions than answers.

* * *

"You okay?" Her father asks her, briefly looking up from the papers he was going over when she eventually stumbles down the stairs that morning. "You look exhausted."

"Had a hard time falling asleep," Bonnie admits, omitting the reasons behind her insomnia. She has a feeling her dad wouldn't take her late night excursion or the fact that she was a witch who was getting in well over her head with trying to solve these murders too well.

Lucky for her, though, her dad had been out working late, so she hadn't had to put a whole lot of effort into sneaking in and out.

"I didn't hear you come in last night," she tells him, pouring herself a cup of coffee.

"I set up shop at the police station and was working late," he replies.

"Did you find anything new?"

God, she really hopes not. The less he knew, the better.

"You know I can't talk about it with you," he says as she takes a seat across from him at the kitchen table.

"It's just…it's crazy that someone would be so… _bold_ to try and shoot us up in the middle of the day. I mean, didn't the previous murders happen quietly at night with no witnesses?"

"Why are you so interested in this?" Rudy asks, his eyebrows shooting up.

"You're involved in this case, that's why," Bonnie replies. "I worry about you. You know that." And that was definitely the truth.

"Don't worry about me, baby, girl, I've been doing this for a long time."

_Something tells me, though, that you've never dealt with anything like this before._

* * *

Kol has never particularly been one for books, but he's no fool. If anything like this had happened in the past, there was a good chance he could find some answers in the family library.

He himself could not recall anything happening like this, but there were gaps—century-long gaps—in his thousand year history thanks to Klaus and his daggers, so he could have easily missed it if this was a case of history repeating himself.

However, there was a vast collection of books and other documents in his family's possession and, even with vampire speed, it would take him time to go through it. Time he didn't have.

"What in the world are you up to, Kol?" Elijah asks, standing in the doorway with a hand tucked into the pocket of his trousers.

"Just some light reading," Kol says dryly, not bothering to look up from the enormous tome he's rapidly flipping through.

He vaguely wanders when and why Elijah has come back to town. It was probably at Klaus's behest. The psychotically paranoid brother of his probably thought he was being conspired against…as per usual.

"Interesting. You've never been a scholar."

He resists the urge to let out an audible sigh, instead asking, "Am I the only one who actually pays any attention to what's actually going on?"

Elijah raises his eyebrows.

"Someone's been hunting supernaturals," Kol fills in.

"That's not exactly unusual. Witch trials come and go, vampire hunters have been around since we were created…"

"This is different," Kol replies, shaking his head and finally looking at Elijah.

"How so?" Elijah asks, eyebrow raised.

He can't help the slight twinge of surprise he feels upon realizing that Elijah is actually willing to hear him out. It was certainly a change of pace.

So, he explains everything. The USB Bonnie Bennett had found, the hit lists, all of it.

"Someone is willing to pay one hell of a fortune to eliminate all of us and I'd like to know why."

"That's assuming there is a rhyme or reason to this," Elijah points out.

"It all comes back to that little Bennett witch," Kol says, shaking his head. "The spirits are drawing her towards all this—something is coming."

* * *

Bonnie spends the day pouring the internet for online back issues of local and county newspapers as well as the newspapers of some neighboring counties. She doesn't know if or how it'll help, but maybe she could put a timeline on things if she figures out when the first killings started.

Only, from what she's seen all of this just started occurring in the past week.

Frustrated, she slams the lid of her laptop down. She can't help but be annoyed as hell at the Spirits, too.

They were perfectly content to give her bits and pieces of the puzzle through some disturbing nightmares, yet they wouldn't give her enough to actually solve it or make sense of anything? What kind of sense does that make?

_Okay, so here's we got so far: Two of the passwords that unlock the lists are the names of people we knew that died…in an admittedly underhanded manner—so obviously the mastermind behind this somehow knows about us and our history._

To put it mildly, that is quite an unsettling thought.

_Then there's the dream about that man frozen in stone. Obviously that's all connected to this…but_ _**how** _ _?_

Maybe that was the place to start. If she could figure out the story behind that man, maybe everything else would fall into place.

That was much easier said than done.

Turns out there's about a billion stories about petrification ranging from Medusa to Harry freaking Potter. And it's not like Bonnie has a name or a distinct time period to track the story down.

 _Great,_ she thinks with a frustrated sigh. _It's not that I was expecting this to be easy, but I sure as hell wasn't expecting it to be downright impossible._

Then something occurs to her and she almost wants to kick herself for not realizing it sooner.

Then again…the lists she unlocked were labeled **'Virginia'.** It wouldn't be a stretch to assume that maybe this is happening around the country.

And sure enough, she discovers a string of murders in Salem, in the northern suburbs of Chicago, Los Angeles, and more. Of course, there's no way to prove they're connected to the ones around Mystic Falls, but if she could maybe find a connection…

_Is there something about these specific locations that attract the supernatural?_

She thinks back to anything she may have read or anything Grams may have told her. And then she finally remembers.

_Okay, so what now?_

She looks over at the new list that she's just printed.

_Time to make some phone calls, I guess._

"I don't know if I should be offended or not about being worth so little," Elena jokes weakly, passing the list over to Stefan so he can peruse it. Her voice cracks a little and Stefan squeezes her knee in a reassuring gesture.

No one shares in Elena's attempt at humor. Not even Damon, the self-proclaimed king of inappropriate humor.

"Yeah, I don't know about the rest of you," Caroline adds, "But if I wasn't already before, I'm officially terrified now."

No response.

"So the first password was Vicki Donovan and the second Mason Lockwood?" Stefan asks, his brow furrowing.

Lips pressed into a thin line, Bonnie nods.

"So not only does this evil genius seem to know who all the supernaturals are, but they know all our dirty little secrets," Damon finishes, his voice sardonic. "Great."

 _More like_ _ **your**_ _dirty little secrets,_ Bonnie thinks. Although, she knows that's not entirely fair. As much as she hates it, she shares some of the culpability in Mason's death.

"Again, I am officially terrified," Caroline repeats.

"And there's more," Bonnie says.

"Of course there is," Caroline replies.

"Since the two lists I unlocked were labeled **'Virginia'** , I couldn't help but wonder if maybe some other states were experiencing something similar.

"And let me guess…" Damon says dryly, trailing off. His icy eyes bore into Bonnie as she pulls some printed news articles out of her bag and tosses them on the coffee table in front of her.

"Salem, LA, Chicago…" She trails off. "To be fair, at first I had no way of knowing if these were the results of the dead pool or just a freakish coincidence, but when I started digging, I realized all these places had one thing in common: Ley lines."

"Ley lines?" Elena repeats, her face scrunching up in confusion.

"They're areas where there tends to be a lot of energy. These places are just dripping in the supernatural. I mean, Salem has a history of witches…some of my own ancestors came from there, Chicago and its surrounding suburbs are said to be extremely haunted…just look at everything that Mystic Falls attracts; vampires, werewolves, witches, hybrids…and apparently a lot of other things we didn't even know about," Bonnie explains.

"So you're saying that there's basically a beacon for these psychopaths to hone in on?" Damon asks. "Well, isn't that just dandy."

* * *

Eventually, Mystic Falls High opens its doors once again and things are pretty uneventful.

Bonnie's sure that that's just the calm before the storm that takes them all out, though.

The faculty and staff have decided to take the policy that if the recent horrors of the town are not spoken of, then everything would just be A-Okay. The idea that they think they're actually protecting anyone this way makes Bonnie roll her eyes.

"Hey, Bonnie," Jake greets her, leaning up against her locker as she gathers her books to go home for the day. "Just out of curiosity: Did you ever figure out what was in that USB you found at with your Grams' stuff?"

"Ugh, I wish," Bonnie says, pausing in her movements and giving a small groan and pouty frown. It doesn't even surprise her how easily lies roll of her tongue these days. Honestly, though, she'd been hoping that he would just forget about her asking for his help with the USB. "I tried everything I could think of as a password, but I guess Grams really wanted to keep her secrets for whatever reason." With that, she finishes gathering her materials, shuts her locker, and begins heading out towards where she had parked her car.

She had made it to school by the skin of her teeth this morning, so of course she got one of the suckiest parking spaces.

"That's too bad," Jake comments, falling into step beside her.

She gives him a sidelong glance. She had seen his car parked just about as far away from hers as possible, so there was really no reason for him to be walking this way with her. It doesn't escape her notice, either, that he looks around as if scoping out if anyone was watching them.

She shakes her head, figuring that paranoia has really gotten to her.

Jake was a nice guy and was just having a conversation with her. Given that she had come to him asking for help first, he had somewhat of a right to inquire about it.

"Yeah, it is," she says, slightly distracted by digging around in her bag for her car keys.

Later, she'll feel like the world's biggest idiot for letting her guard drop like that. At the moment, though, there's a sharp pain in her side before unconsciousness creeps up to greet her.


	7. Chapter 7

She wakes up to a numbing throb radiating through her body. Remembering how Jake had suddenly decided to pull a taser on her, Bonnie quickly shoots up into a sitting position.

She almost falls onto her back once again. Her head feels thick like someone has stuffed it with a bunch of cotton.

"Take it easy," a voice advises her.

It takes her a few moments to register that it's Kol who's speaking to her.

"Though, I must say that I'm not too impressed that you let some week, pathetic little human get the better of you," he continues.

"Yeah, you and me both," Bonnie mutters. Her head slowly seems to be clearing up a bit and the questions that matter come to her.

"Wait, how did I get here? Where is here?" she asks, dripping her hands from her temples. "How'd you…"

"Here would be my home. As to the how…well, I wanted to have a little chat with you, see if maybe I could get through your thick skull today. Lucky for you, I showed up just in time."

Bonnie almost snorts at that.

"Yeah, insults will get you everywhere with me," she rasps dryly. Then she softly asks, "What did you do to Jake?"

"I didn't kill him," Kol assures her. "Not yet, anyway." He makes a vague gesture towards an adjoining room.

She slowly gets up despite her body's protests and moves towards where he had gestured.

The floor is lined with plastic to help with any mess. Jake is tied to a chair and unconscious—which is probably more of a mercy than anything, considering by the state he's in. His nose is broken, as well as most of his fingers, judging by their odd angles. Bloody cuts and bruised marred him all over.

Bonnie has to work to keep down the bile that rises in her throat, burning it.

"Unfortunately, he's on vervain and I'm too impatient to wait until it's out of his system or to bleed it out of him," Kol explains, sounding pretty pleased with himself. "So I've had to work on some…alternative methods to encourage him to speak."

Bonnie stumbles forward, fully intending to free her classmate. A strong hand falls on her shoulder and pulls her back, though.

"Just what do you think you are doing?" Kol demands to know.

"What do you think?" She snaps. "I'm freeing him."

"You know," he says conversationally, "I honestly believed that you're the smartest out of your sad little group, but you're certainly making me question that today."

Bonnie's green eyes narrow at him.

"He tried to  _kill_ you, Bonnie," Kol reminds her. "Not just kill you, he was going to cash in on your death, too."

"Yeah, but…I've known him since we were kids," Bonnie protests weakly.

It sounds dumb even to her. Pastor Young had known her since she was a baby and he'd still wanted her dead once he found out what she was.

 _Maybe you don't want to accept the fact that you can't trust anyone right now,_ a little voice in her head tells her.

"This…this isn't right," she adds.

"It's not about right or wrong, darling. It's about survival," Kol tells her. "So unless you have a better plan to make him talk…"

She thinks for a moment, wracking her brain through anything that would save Jake from more torture, and nervously biting her lip, before replying, "Well I  _am_ a witch."

Kol grins and she has no doubt that this is exactly what he wanted all along.

She moves forward and gently takes Jake's head in her hands. He doesn't even stir. She's slammed with de ja vu, remember when she had done this to Mason Lockwood.

 _Funny how the past likes to repeat itself,_ she muses. The fact that she has recently discovered that Mason's name is one of the passwords to unlocking the hit lists on the dead pool certainly added to the creep factor.

She moves forward and carefully takes Jake's head in her hands, her fingers trailing along his temple. He doesn't even stir. She begins to gently probe into his mind with magic and is barraged by an array of images.

Then, she quickly steps back

"Well?" Kol asks impatiently.

"You're given a single name to begin with," Bonnie says slowly, still sorting out all she has just seen. "You take that person out, give them visual proof that you did, then they give you a password to a list. With every kill, you're given another password. The more you prove yourself, the more chances you're given to win." Her mouth twists wryly at the word win.

" _Who_ is giving out the information?" Kol asks. " _How_ are they deciding who to give it to in the first place?"

"I don't know," Bonnie snaps. " _He_ doesn't know."

"Hmm…pity." He looks over at Jake and with a shrug says, "It seems like your usefulness has just run out." He reaches out at lightning speed, snapping Jake's neck into an unnatural angle.

A sickening crack echoes throughout the room.

Bonnie gasps, stepping back in shock and looking at him with wide eyes. She knows she should have seen it coming, but…

Wordlessly, she turns away from him and makes a beeline for the front door.

"Oh, come now," Kol says, hot on her heels. "You know he couldn't be left alive."

Does she know that? Yes? No? Maybe?

"It's not right," she says, quietly. She tries to ignore the throbbing pain she feels when she shakes her head.

The more she thinks about it, the more that awful sense of de ja vu grows. Not even a year ago, she had been poking around in Mason Lockwood's head in the same exactly way before Damon had killed him.

Only then, he had run away. She had known what Damon was going to do, and silly as it was, she thought she was absolving herself of it all by leaving. Any guilt she felt, she had tried pushing down by telling herself that Mason was a threat, he was working with Katherine, after all.

At the end of the day, though, she had still been culpable to an extent, no matter how much she tries to justify it.

While it hadn't been her idea to force information from Jake, and while he had been trying to kill her, nothing about this feels right.

"I'm not…I'm not doing this," she tells Kol, still moving and making a beeline for the front door. "All I know is that I can't trust anyone anymore, least of all  _you_."

"Right. This is only the second time I've saved your life, after all," he replies sardonically. "I know you know more than you're letting on," he adds.

"What?" she asks, freezing in her tracks.

"Quit playing dumb. While your actions have been questionable lately, you're anything but," Kol tells her. "You found Nik's dead hybrids, I know you've unlocked at least one of the lists, maybe even more…the spirits want you to figure this one out, don't they?"

"Well, something tells me that they certainly wouldn't want me getting help from  _you,_ " Bonnie retorts, finally turning to look back at him.

"I'm sure they'd much rather see you alive, though," Kol counters.

 _That's debatable,_ she thinks dryly, reminiscing on her recent spats with the spirits.

"What else have they shown you?" Kol asks, stepping closer to her.

Bonnie bites her lower lip, mulling it over. There's no denying Kol's as eager to solve all this as she is, even if it's to save his own hide. And as much as she hates it, he  _has_ saved her life twice now. She has reason to doubt he's planning on stabbing her in the back any time soon.

 _Not to mention he's a thousand years old, too,_ she realizes.  _Maybe he would have some sort of inkling about the dream I had with the man made of stone and how he's connected to all this._

"Ley lines. All the killing are taking place in spots with ley lines, which makes sense since their energy tends to attract the supernatural," she says. "But…there's this dream I've had more than once that I can't quite figure out," she finally admits out loud. "Some man—or whatever he is—he's been mummified into stone and has been that way for thousands of years. I guess he's connected to all of this somehow, but I have no clue and I haven't been able to figure it out."

Kol appears pensive for a moment and then his face hardens.

"Silas," he says, his voice tight.

"Silas? Who's Silas?" Bonnie asks blankly.

Kol gestures for her to follow him back towards a living area. She stands there stiffly for a few short moments, weighing the pros and cons internally. But she's made it this far and the whole reason she's even told him about her dreams in hopes that he'd maybe have an answer.

She slowly re-enters the living area, carefully perching on the couch. Kol swaggers over to a crystal decanter, pouring two generous glasses of amber liquid.

Normally, Bonnie would refuse, wanting to keep a clear mind. However, she can really,  _really_ use a stiff drink at the moment. She takes the glass Kol offers her, ignoring the feeling she gets when their fingers brush—she spends so much time around vampires these days, she's become accustomed to it. She takes a sip, ignoring the burn in her throat. It was expensive brandy, the same kind her dad usually kept stock of.

"It's quite the story, actually," Kol begins. "It's a story of love, power, betrayal…"

"Get to the point."

"Silas is the first immortal," Kol tells her.

"Wait," Bonnie interrupts, shaking her head in confusion. "I thought you and your family—"

"No," he replies. "We may have become the first vampires, but Silas is something completely different. He was a warlock who was in a relationship with a powerful witch named Quetsiyah. Together, they found a way to become immortal… _truly_ immortal—no reliance on blood, no fear of white oak stakes, vervain, sunlight, no choosing between magic and immortality."

Bonnie's eyes widen, struggling to comprehend how such a thing is even possible. How could one go against nature in such a massive way with seemingly no consequences?

"Except, Silas didn't love Quetsiyah. He took his immortality and gave what was meant for Quetsiyah to another woman. So Quetsiyah killed the woman before she could become immortal and then sealed Silas away in a tomb forever."

Bonnie pensively taps her fingers against the crystal of her glass. The tale certainly would explain the dream she had—if it's even true, that its—but it still didn't explain…"

"So say this is all true and not some old myth or whatever, what would any of this have to do with the dead pool?" Bonnie asks, looking up at Kol.

"Because it would mean that whoever is funding these killings is a witch or has a witch that could use the energy from each death until they have enough to unleash Silas."

"That doesn't prove the story is true," Bonnie points out. "I'm mean, we've fallen for Klaus's curse of the sun and the moon tale he used to spread around to break his hybrid curse."

"I suppose that's a fair suspicion," Kol concedes after draining his glass of brandy. "But I'm fairly confident in my source. It was a tale Ayanna told me. She was a descendent of Quetsiyah, which means  _you_ are a descendent of Quetsiyah. That's why the spirits are pushing so hard for you to figure this out and put a stop to it.

Speechless, Bonnie chooses to toss back whatever is left in her glass of brandy.

* * *

 

After reluctantly receiving a ride from Kol to retrieve her car, Bonnie finds herself feeling very overwhelmed and oh so very, very tired.

She's lucky enough to make it back home before her father does, one again. It's only a matter of time before her luck runs out on that front, though.

She can already feel one hell of a stress headache building up behind her eyes. She is just putting a tea kettle onto the stove top when Caroline barges into her home.

"Where the hell have you been?" the blonde demands to know. "We couldn't find you after school, you weren't answering your phone, we've been everywhere looking for you! This is the third time I've been over here, praying to God I've finally found you! Elena wanted to tell your dad that you're missing—"

"Oh, God, please tell me you guys didn't," Bonnie groans.

"No, but you can't just drop off the face of the earth when some psycho has made a game out of killing us all!" Caroline practically screeches, waving her hands around frantically.

"I'm sorry. I—"

She's easily able to think up at least three believable lies and she's more than a little tempted to let one of them roll off her tongue. But she stops and thinks, instead. More often than not, she's come to realize that miscommunications or a total lack of communication has caused them significant problems in the past. Lies just don't go over well and have a way of coming back to bite you in the ass.

"Call everyone to the Boardinghouse," Bonnie says, instead. "It's a long story that I don't want to have to repeat over and over again."

As Caroline begins making phone calls, Bonnie writes a note to leave for her dad.

_Sleeping over at Elena's w/ Caroline to study for a test. Call me if you need me_

_Love, Bonnie_

Hopefully that's one lie that won't come back to bite her in the ass any time soon.

* * *

 

"And you believe him? Just like that?" Damon asks with a frown.

"Well, I'm obviously going to do my own research, but there's no denying that it fits everything a little too well," Bonnie says. "Besides, what would Kol gain from lying to me and saving my life, not once, but twice—"

"Obviously, he just wants to use you!" Damon snaps.

"Ahh, right," Bonnie replies dryly. "I forgot that you're the one who has a monopoly on that."

"Bonnie!" Elena exclaims, eyes widening.

Bonnie simply meets Elena's gaze and raises her eyebrows, as if daring the new vampire to deny it. Elena doesn't.

"Believe me, don't believe me…either way, I'm going to be the one who has to fix it all anyway," Bonnie mutters. "Just thought you'd all might like to have a clue of what's going on."

"Is everything okay, Bonnie?" Stefan asks, concern spreading across his face. "It's just that you seem a bit…of lately?"

Bonnie sighs, running her fingers through her hair. "I'm tired," she says, looking down at one of the antique Persian rugs on the ground. "I'm tired of one crisis after another, of constantly trying to find a way out of it all, of all the bodies we keep leaving in our wake as collateral. And maybe, just maybe working with Kol could be a way to end things quickly, which I know is crazy because, well, it's  _Kol,_ but it's not like it's the first time we've bent and worked with someone we don't like."

"You seem pretty sure of this," Elena says, quietly.

"Then, I guess I'm a damn good actress because I haven't been sure of anything in over a year."

"Kol's crazy. He's probably gonna gut us all and hang our heads on pikes in his front lawn," Damon says, taking in a healthy amount of the bourbon he has in his hand.

"Sounds like a typical Thursday for us," Bonnie quips.

"To be fair, it sounds like Kol has a vested interest in stopping all this…I mean, even the possibility of someone being stronger than the Originals…" Caroline shudders, not daring to finish that thought.

"Thing is, even if we know the why, now we're still left with finding out what witch is orchestrating all of this. You could probably catch a hundred people in this dead pool and still not find a single on who even has a clue who started all of this," Bonnie says with a frustrated sigh.

And then something occurs to her; a possibility that somehow seems so much worse.

"Unless…" A breath escapes her with a  _whoosh._ "If Kol is right and it was one of my ancestors who sealed Silas away and him being released is the end goal of this nightmare..." She pauses to backtrack a bit. " _A lot_ of witches in my bloodline have favored blood magic to bind and seal things, like Ayanna did with Esther's coffin,' Bonnie explains. "Blood magic is way more complicated and way harder to undo…and if I'm right, then…"

"Bonnie?" Stefan asks, prompting her to continue.

"There's a good chance it's another Bennett witch who set all this up."


End file.
